My lead article in our seven-page memorial section for the late biologist and CSI Fellow E.O. Wilson (May/June 2022) included a long paragraph about recent accusations of racism against Wilson due to a letter he once wrote in support of controversial Canadian psychologist J. Philippe Rushton. I ended, “Of course Wilson is no longer here to respond to the accusations.”

Maybe not, but one of his most esteemed collaborators, biologist Bert Hölldobler, has strongly responded. Now a Regents Professor at Arizona State University, Hölldobler was Professor of Biology and Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard from 1973–1990, where, like Wilson, he studied social organization in insects, especially ants. He is a member of both the U.S. and German National Academies of Sciences. He coauthored with Wilson the Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Ants, and subsequently they coauthored three other books, most recently The Leafcutter Ants (2011). Hölldobler has now published a vigorous defense of Wilson, “Self-Righteous Vigilantism in Science: The Case of Edward O. Wilson.” The 2,500-word text is available online at eSKEPTIC, April 5, 2022.

Hölldobler kindly gave Skeptical Inquirer permission to quote from it.

“It is clear to me that Ed could not have paid much scrutiny to Rushton’s work but rather was motivated by the impression he got from Rushton’s own description of his plight, namely, that he was being persecuted by far-left wing ideologues, as Wilson himself had been after publication of Sociobiology,” Hölldobler writes.

“Wilson’s positive response to Rushton’s pleas appears to me naïve. I assume that he realized this later too, because to my knowledge he never cited Rushton’s work nor mentioned it in conversations I had with him.”

Hölldobler concludes: “Given Wilson’s numerous articles, books, lectures, and public statements, which contain nothing even remotely supportive of racism, it seems unfair to zero in on this limited correspondence with a single colleague to be waved like a red flag to tarnish a scholar’s reputation. …  Such self-righteous vigilantism is highly unjust and distortive.”

Hölldobler also says Wilson wrote in a note to Nature (Vol. 289, February 19, 1981), “I am happy to point out that no justification for racism is to be found in the truly scientific study of the biological basis of social behaviour.”

Hölldobler tells the Skeptical Inquirer his “Self-Righteous Vigilantism” piece went through multiple versions. He first submitted it to the New York Review of Books, which has published recent criticisms of Wilson as well as those way back in the Sociobiology years that caused Wilson such anguish. They declined. He reframed it, had it critically reviewed, and resubmitted it. They again rejected it. But now it has seen the light of day, and he is grateful for whatever attention it might get. He tells SI, it is “my defense of my friend Ed, who cannot defend himself anymore.”

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On a far lighter note, our family friend Susanne Page has shared with me some memories that show E.O. Wilson’s human side, and she agreed I might share them with you. She, a noted professional photographer, and her late husband Jake Page, then a writer, editor, and columnist for Smithsonian magazine, once went on a trip to the Amazon with Wilson. The occasion was to report on a World Wildlife Fund project by Smithsonian biologist Thomas Lovejoy, but Wilson came too. They were camped somewhere outside of Manaus, Brazil.

“It was dark, after dinner, with an oil lantern for light and sleeping hammocks in the background shadows, and we were sharing a wee bit of warm Brazilian beer,” she says.

“In the middle of general discussions, an ant marched across the rough-hewn table, and Ed paused, squinted … and announced its Latin name,” she recalls. “At another point a very large, hairy spider wandered up the post by which I was sitting, about three inches from my arm. Ed rushed over and identified it, then went on with the conversations.”

One time a parrot that just hung out near the camp “really did land on Ed’s head, then Tom’s head.” She thinks Smithsonian used that image in its article. “To bathe, we had a nearby creek with a swimming hole, and the water was filled with neon tetras,” she recalls.

She says Wilson talked a lot on that trip about how he regretted that biologists were never portrayed in movies other than as dweebs. He wished instead they could be shown as sexy, and he had a lot of fun talking about perfect actors for the job. “The conversation was very jolly.”